Posts Tagged ‘Global Capitalism’

International financial organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization have come to be a kind of world government, dictating policy to supposedly sovereign governments.

I recently read a book, The Making of Global Capitalism (2012) by two Canadian leftists named Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, on how this came about. I thank my friend Tim Mullins for recommending it.

It’s quite a story. It is not well understood.

The first part of the story is the U.S. New Deal. President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress gave the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System the authority they needed to stabilize the crumbling U.S. financial and banking system.

The second part is the 30 years following World War Two. Under the leadership of the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve, international financial institutions were created that duplicated the U.S. system. They presided over the era of greatest peace and prosperity that North Americans and Europeans had ever since.

The third part is what happened after that. The world’s financial system endures a series of ever-greater financial crises. To deal with them, international financial institutions demand the surrender of gains made by American and European workers and the middle class in the earlier era.

The irony is that a financial governing structure created by American power is now stronger than ever, while the actual American economy is rotting away beneath it.

Panitch and Gindin described in great detail how this happened, step-by-step,.